


Office furniture

by mayamaia



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Atmospheric, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 13:06:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5418200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayamaia/pseuds/mayamaia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at everpresent parts of UNCLE which stand too frequently as background</p>
            </blockquote>





	Office furniture

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kleenexwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kleenexwoman/gifts).



> That was a very challenging prompt, thank you!

A voice, emanating from a darkened office, in the silence of night. Deeply inflected, feminine, a hint of India. Alone, its speaker only seen as one foot tapping in the spill of light from a desk lamp.

"Is that Heather? Hey. Oh did he? I've heard about him. Yeah, I know. Yeah."

Cut to a woman lying under a sunlamp. Darkish blonde, bathing suit. Also in an office, identical except for the faint sounds of business on the other side of the closed door.

"It's not like he's crude. ...Well, of course you have doubts, but that's because of the rest of them. It's not as if he sees us as office furniture."

Back to the darkness, one pointed toe twitching in light.

"But he never did it, did he? Never asked. Hang on, I'm getting a signal."

An arm reaches through the light to touch a switch, as a tinny voice asked for Channel M.

"Channel M is open."

******

An elderly woman with a massive floral bonnet, standing by the entrance of an old house, cuddles a small fluffy dog while speaking clearly into his collar.

"They're in place. Flies are on the wall in the dining room, the parlor, the ladies', the hall, the master suite," she leaned briefly forward to snuffle her nose in the dog's patient ears, "Mortimer did his very best to be a perfect nuisance and I was able to place at my leisure."

She begins to walk down the street, slowly, hips rolling as if she could make good use of a cane, but with purpose. She neatly avoids puddles that might mark her cloth shoes or the lace fringe of her skirt.

"Moving on to the next target, dear. Hat shop, tended by Agent Oregano. Have we made any progress in determining ideal placement of visual recorders?"

She suddenly lapses into baby talk as she approaches another pedestrian, "Oh who's a fuzzums, Mortie, who's a fuzzums? Ittle widdle widdly bit of fluff..."

*****

Back to Heather, under her sunlamp. She's smiling as she listens to two male voices emitted by her switchboard.

"That makes it even more important to help her, Illya," Mr Solo's voice was saying, "bad luck is worse than bad men."

Heather raised an eyebrow as Mr Kuryakin's voice replied, "Bad luck is notoriously unreliable, and therefore cannot be efficiently countered. The evil, however, are inexpensive to predict."

Heather's door opens, allowing a Chinese woman with short hair to walk smoothly in, handing a file to her reclining coworker. The newcomer is in a standard outfit: knee length skirt, blouse, firearm, low heels. Heather's lips part as she takes the file, and clearly form the shapes of the words, "Thank you, Wanda."

Heather's fingers linger briefly where they touch Wanda's, and their eyes lock for a few more precious moments while Mr Solo's voice irritably replies, "But people do rely on bad luck anyway if it strikes them enough, and then they turn to someone to turn it around - us, perhaps, or if we are unavailable, to THRUSH."

Wanda smiles, and turns away, as Kuryakin answers, "You may want to polish that one before you use it on one of your comely recruits." The door opens before Wanda, and she leaves.

*****

A very brightly blonde woman runs her fingers over a feminine leg in front of her. Besides her face and her fingers, only her bare shoulders are visible over the knee she is so lightly, teasingly massaging.

"You would have such purpose with us, Miss Rogers." Her voice is rich and vaguely accented, her smile lopsided.

"Consider your duties, and what is expected of you. What is a secretary for, even in the most forward thinking of organizations, but to stand where it is needed," Angelique chuckles, richly, and leans forward to bite gently at the thigh she's toying with, while her fingers walk their way up the leg and offscreen.

In another office, like the first two, a black woman dressed like Wanda, with spreading hair pulled back with a hairband, sits with pen scratching at a pad of paper. She raises an eyebrow at her switchboard, from which Angelique's voice finishes her sentence, "with a man between its legs to rifle through its drawers?"

The black woman chuckles, and faithfully transfers the comment, along with Lisa's sarcastic but increasingly incoherent reply that it sounded precisely like Angelique's current occupation.

A light flashes in front of her, and she flicks a switch, illuminating another light labeled "redirect".

*****

A Japanese woman in a labcoat, with hair pulled back in a bun, stands before a mess of wires hooked to a speaker and an oscilloscope. She turns a knob, and Mr. Kuryakin's voice emerges.

"...and altruism is itself notoriously unreliable where it relies upon individual motivations. Nepotism is inevitable, and wasteful use of resourc..."

The scientist scribbles in her notebook, and turns the knob again, through static until another voice emerges. It is female, and sounds like a newsreader.

"...result, terraforming inevitably lays waste to existing natural resources, transforming the landscape to a point that pre-existing beauties are lost or damaged beyond repair."

More knob fiddling, and a voice full of static demands, "..tson, come here, I need... ," in the cracks before the signal settles on a neutrally toned voice.

"Anthropogenic climate change contributes to fully 90 percent of..."

Static erupts, and the scientist flicks a switch off, then begins to check her wiring.

*****

The scene has returned to the office of the black woman. Her pad has been put away, and she's gesturing broadly as she speaks.

"Would YOU want her job? I would not, I do not need to be asked..."

The first office again. The foot in the pool of light taps, and its owner makes noises of agreement.

"Mm hmm. Yeah. No, she's got it harder than any of them. Really, though. Well, thank you Aliya."

A thin line of smoke drifts into the light.

"Yes, well of course we try."

A light begins to blink on her desk, and her hand reaches for it.

"We always have to try."


End file.
